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Brand excellence: measuring the impact of advertising and brand personality on buying decisions
Rajagopal,
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To cite this document:
Rajagopal, (2006) "Brand excellence: measuring the impact of advertising and brand personality on buying decisions", Measuring
Business Excellence, Vol. 10 Issue: 3, pp.56-65, https://doi.org/10.1108/13683040610685793
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(1995),"The role of advertising in brand image development", Journal of Product & Brand Management, Vol. 4 Iss 4 pp. 23-34 <a
href="https://doi.org/10.1108/10610429510097672">https://doi.org/10.1108/10610429510097672</a>
(2015),"Brand personality and purchase intention", European Business Review, Vol. 27 Iss 5 pp. 462-476 <a href="https://doi.org/10.1108/
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PAGE 56 j MEASURING BUSINESS EXCELLENCE j VOL. 10 NO. 3 2006, pp. 56-65, Q Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 1368-3047 DOI 10.1108/13683040610685793
value means to a typical loyal customer; and what, ultimately, is the essential nature and
character of the brand over time.
In mass-market retail talent is generally viewed as a valuable source of brand building as
quality of services offered by the retailers adds to the pride of the brand. The companies may
position themselves for the mass market by providing outstanding customer interactions
which may optimize profit and the core values of brand. The following discussions in the
paper analyze the influence of advertising practices on developing brand personality and
their impact on the buying behavior of consumers. The discussions in the paper are woven
around the issues concerning advertising as brand drivers, brand typology, cognitive
relationship between the consumer behavior, communication and brand perceptions. The
paper also attempts to synchronize viable propositions as managerial implication for
building the brand personality considering the interactive cognitive variables of consumer
behavior.
more (or less) favorably to marketing mix activity for the brand, as compared to when the
same marketing activity is attributed to a hypothetical or unnamed version of the product or
service. Consumer response to marketing activity for competitive brands or an alternatively
named version of the product or service can also be useful benchmarks (i.e. for determining
the uniqueness of brand associations and the opportunity cost of brand extensions,
respectively). Customer-based brand equity emerges when the consumer is aware of and
familiar with the brand and holds some favorable, strong, and unique brand associations in
memory.
Consumers have only one image of a brand, one created by the deployment of the brand
assets at your disposal: name, tradition, packaging, advertising, promotion posture, pricing,
trade acceptance, sales force discipline, customer satisfaction, repurchases patterns, etc.
Clearly some brand assets are more important to product marketers than to service
marketers, and vice versa. Some competitive environments put more of a premium on
certain assets as well. Quality and price do not exist as isolated concepts in consumers
minds and are interrelated. Research has shown that deep discounts do cause the
consumer to believe that something is wrong. Frequent discounting serves to lower the value
of the brand because of an almost subconscious reaction by the consumer who believes
that quality also has been lowered (remember shirts with alligators on them?) or, in a value
rebound, consumers begin to perceive the everyday price as too high. The brand is then
bought only on deal. This paper attempts to explore the various mechanism that help
building the brand personality through marketing communications like advertising, word of
mouth etc.
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VOL. 10 NO. 3 2006 MEASURING BUSINESS EXCELLENCE PAGE 57
physical assets due to the market positioning achieved by its brand and the extension
potential of the brand (Tauber, 1998).
1. Brand profiling where your brand and its competitors are profiled against a set of
indicators and attributes. The indicators are usually fixed within the model, but attributes
may be specific to the brand or its category.
2. Conversion model where the model assesses the degree of strength or vulnerability you
have in your customer base in relation to competition. Credit card companies use this to
identify which competitive customers they should approach as they are open to
alternative offers, and which they should not waste their time on because they are loyal to
their existing suppliers.
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PAGE 58 MEASURING BUSINESS EXCELLENCE VOL. 10 NO. 3 2006
equity at the firm level as the incremental profit per year obtained by the brand in comparison
to a brand with the same product and price but with minimal brand-building efforts. At the
customer level, it determines the difference between an individual customers overall choice
probability for the brand and his or her choice probability for the underlying product with
merely its push-based availability and awareness. The approach takes into account three
sources of brand equity brand awareness, attribute perception biases, and non-attribute
preference and reveals how much each of the three sources contributes to brand equity. In
addition, the proposed method incorporates the impact of brand equity on enhancing the
brands availability. The method provides what-if analysis capabilities to predict the likely
impacts of alternative approaches to enhance a brands equity (Na et al., 1999; Knox and
Walker, 2001; Rajagopal and Sanchez, 2004).
those traits that are common to all brands in the product category. Consumers perceive the
brand on dimensions that typically capture a persons personality, and extend that to the
domain of brands. The dimensions of brand personality are defined by extending the
dimensions of human personality to the domain of brands.
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VOL. 10 NO. 3 2006 MEASURING BUSINESS EXCELLENCE PAGE 59
force behind market leadership is perceived value not price or inherent product attributes.
As long as a brand offers customers a superior perceived value, good market performance
will follow, which makes consistency a highly important feature of brand behavior. Hence it
may be stated that consumers cultivate relationship with the brands that involve in life style,
gender, age, educational background, social values and culture.
Obviously, this aspect is much less under the control of marketers. Indirectly, the brand
personality is created by all the elements of the marketing mix. Batra et al. (1993) suggest
that the personality of a brand is created over time, by the all constituents of marketing-mix.
There is a relationship between the brand-as-person and the customer, which is analogous
to the relationship between two people. The brand personality provides depth, feelings and
liking to the relationship. A friendly relationship can involve very different brand personalities.
Some friends are fun and irreverent. Others are serious and command respect. Others are
reliable and unpretentious. Still others are just comfortable to be around. A focus on the
friend relationship rather than the brand personality can allow more scope and flexibility in
the implementation of the brand identity. The focus is upon consumer perceptions, attitudes,
and behavior towards the brand; attitudes and perceptions of the brand itself are hidden
behind the closed doors of the organization. Yet the relationship with another person is
deeply affected by not only who that person is but also what that person thinks of you.
Similarly, a brand-customer relationship will have an active partner at each end, the brand as
well as the customer. Thus the scanning of data and framing hypotheses about the types of
relationships that exist becomes essential. In the latter stage, respondents may be allocated
to relationship categories on the basis of the hypothesized relationship groupings. In the
process, the relationship typology is refined. The relationships are then formalized into
specifications, and coders classify the respondents into those relationships. The groups are
then profiled. Often the relationship groupings correspond to like, dislike, and neutral
segments. This discussion reveals that higher investment in consumer-brand relationships
pulls greater loyalty in the competitive environment.
The type of relationship that customers possess with the brands based on the loyalty levels
is an extremely significant parameter for the marketers. Duncan and Moriarty (1998) point
out that each of the new generation marketing approaches include customer-focused,
market-driven, outside-in, one-to-one marketing, data-driven marketing, relationship
marketing, integrated marketing, and integrated marketing communications that
emphasize two-way communication through better listening to customers and the idea
that communication before, during and after transactions can build or destroy important
brand relationships. The way consumers perceive brands is a key determinant of long-term
business consumer relationships. A large proportion of consumer brand perception is
obtained under low-involvement conditions and is therefore not consciously processed by
the consumers brain. Such associations tend to be stored in terms of metaphors and
importantly, they tend to aggregate in clusters.
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PAGE 60 MEASURING BUSINESS EXCELLENCE VOL. 10 NO. 3 2006
The brand personality has product attributes, corporate image and brand attributes
resulting from the other two variables. The customer needs, perceived use value associated
with the product, and the attitudinal variables of the customer form the core of customer
personality. The relationship between the brand and customer personalities has three
dimensions strong, vacillating and weak. The strong hold of the relationship leads to
loyalty development while the weak links form the discrete relationship. The vacillating
dimension thereof cultivates the risk of brand switching due to uncertainty of consumer
decision to get associated with the brand or otherwise.
features trying to appeal to consumers rationally. Usually the focus would be the unique
sales proposition (USP) or a selling idea which can differentiate the brand from its
competitors. It has been observed that the consumers will come up with the descriptions like
fun-loving, enjoyable, American style while people will think of rebellious and younger
generation oriented when talking about the product. Furthermore, everyone wants
something that can reflect or further improve his/her self-portrayal; brand personality which
is created and perceived through advertising becomes a vital concern in our purchasing
decisions. Advertising builds the emotional image of the brand and the brand personality
associated thereof provides depth, feelings and liking to the relationship. A brand
personality thus can make a brand more interesting and memorable and become a vehicle
to express a customers identity. In view of the above discussion it may be delineated that
advertisements or market communications help building the brand personality of the
product when consumer correlates the human qualities to the products that is advertised.
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VOL. 10 NO. 3 2006 MEASURING BUSINESS EXCELLENCE PAGE 61
input, transformation, and output in the model. The input of the model refers to the
advertising exposure, transformation refers to adverting processing, and output refers to
advertising responses. Branding has to do with customer perceptions and their behaviors
when buying; it is not a characteristic of a product, a graphic design, a company or a
category. In branding the term media refers to communication vehicles such as
newspapers, magazines, radio, television, billboards and direct mail. Advertisers use media
to convey commercial messages to their target audiences, and the media depend to
different degrees on advertising revenues to cover the cost of their operations. I has been
observed that effective consumer-brand relationship can be established after the buyer
realizes the purchase and simultaneously transfers the brand personality.
positive advertising and communication help in building and nurturing the brand personality
in the competitive situation in a market. The intimacy theory of communication builds the
brand personality more effectively across varied consumer situations than exchange or
seduction theory. Drawing from psychology and social psychology, it presents intimacy
attributes relevant to services marketing the five Cs of communication, caring,
commitment, comfort, and conflict resolution, which play a vital role in brand personality.
The concept of sensitivity of communication maybe described as the brand personality is
perceived by the consumers when the advertisement is positive to their own personality and
endorses the intimacy attributes with the communication.
The consumers expect to gain something from engaging in word-of mouth (WOM) or that
they indirectly satisfy a desire when providing personal opinion to others through WOM,
regardless of the root of the motivation. Incentive programs may therefore work as an
extrinsic motivator, and people may engage in more WOM behaviors when incentives are
delivered, and this motivation may increase as the incentive increases. There is a positive
relationship between the size of the brand and promise offered therein, and a consumers
likelihood to generate WOM. The development of message strategy is linked with an
advertiser and media factor. It depends on what an advertiser needs and how the message
for advertising can be carried on to the media effectively. A compromise to these factors
would help in developing the most effective message idea, as a result of facts judged about
products, markets, consumers and competitors. In this process the strength of background
information is the foundation of building message ideas. It has been argued that cognition
and effect influence each other, and consequently can be seen as two components of one
system. The underlying idea is that thoughts are not free of feelings and vice versa. Thus,
advertising processing and response are a combination of both cognition and affect.
Consumers use both their cognitive and affective systems to process advertising, and
advertising responses can be both cognitive and affective.
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PAGE 62 MEASURING BUSINESS EXCELLENCE VOL. 10 NO. 3 2006
advertising campaigns with multiple and different messages, the order effects may be
important. Van Osselaer and Alba (2000) discuss that though the companies have full
discretion in designing campaigns, it is all the more interesting to see if it makes a difference
whether they start building brand personality by appealing to affective or cognitive
reactions. Therefore, the brand personality is influenced largely by the affective and
cognitive attributes in the process of the advertising communication.
The cognitive response theory can be easily applied to marketing and advertising because it
provides many important insights about persuasion variables and further more attempts to
make predictions about variables such as distraction, repetition and issue involvement.
Advertisers want the cognitive response that triggers something in the consumers brain that
gives them a favorable attitude about whatever is being advertised. One major reason
cognitive responses are important to advertising is distracters. A distracter is a variable that
inhibits the generation of cognitive responses. There are certain characteristics of the
stimulus that itself may enhance or hamper the elaboration of the message. A second
category of factors consists of the characteristics of the individual and finally the situational
factors may be important. Several types of situational factors can be discerned. The
environment of the subject at the time of exposure may influence message elaboration.
Advertisements and point of purchase communications are frequently combined into
clusters of messages, such as a commercial block on television, radio, or in a movie theatre.
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The media context can be an important situational factor. Media context is defined here as
the characteristics of the content of the medium in which an ad is inserted as they are
perceived by the individuals who are exposed to it. Media context is important. A message
style that contrasts with the nature of the context may lead to positive advertising effects.
This phenomenon may be explained by Meyers-Levy and Tybout (1997) as the contrast
effect which explains that the novelty of advertising and the unexpectedness of the
information given in its context often lead to increased attention, because the
advertisements is perceived as innovative and interesting. It has been observed that for
the individuals with low product category involvement, advertising messages shown in a
congruent media will lead to more positive attitudes towards the advertisement. The
customers will tend to do more content analysis thereof and exercise the brand recall
messages in reference to the communications that suite and vis-a-vis for the customer
having high product category involvement. The comprehension to the customer on the
brand and his response on the brand knowledge influence the creation of brand personality
through marketing communications either by advertising or inter-personal communications
such as word-of-mouth.
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VOL. 10 NO. 3 2006 MEASURING BUSINESS EXCELLENCE PAGE 63
6. Managerial implications
It will be of critical importance for future researchers and practitioners to understand the
increasingly complex variety of factors underlying and influencing the linkages between
brands and customer relationships. In this context the managerial importance of the topic
seems evident. Advertising is by far the most important communication tool in marketing,
and with every advertisement brand personality is built. Understanding how brand
personality is created in the minds of consumers is essential for effective use of a companys
marketing tools. Effective brand management, encompassing brand personality is of
paramount importance in reaching the overall company goals of satisfaction, loyalty, and
profitability. The media effectiveness in reference to brand personality and customer
response to the brands may be studied for building long-term branding strategies. The
effectiveness of any advertisement can be measured at two different levels pre-insertion
and post-insertion of the advertisement in the media along with the brand awareness
programs for effective impact of communication on the customers segment.
Advertising may be described as an investment in brands which generate sales revenue
over time. The reach of brands is associated with the effectiveness of the advertising.
Companies may choose to deliver advertising in a more appealing dimension for quick
cognitive reflexes of customers. Several companies in Europe have emerged with alternative
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7. Conclusions
The strength of a brand rests in its value acquired through tangible attributes like pertinence
of brand name and associated benefits thereof. Consumers perceive the brand on
dimensions that typically capture a persons personality, and extend that to the domain of
brands. The dimensions of brand personality are defined by extending the dimensions of
human personality to the domain of brands. However, competitors attempt to put more
premiums on personality issues to drive their brands competitively in the market. The
creation of brand personality involves active corporate communication and needs to be
adjusted to the brand life cycle variability. Hence, a company may use advertising strategies
appealing to customers in the process of creating effective brand personalities in reference
to the sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication and ruggedness.
Customer-centered brand equity allows the company to derive various functions of
marketing-mix favourably and strong brand equity would help to retain customers as well as
to reduce the risk of abrupt brand switching. The relationship between the brand and
customer is largely governed by the psychographic variables that can be measured broadly
by the closeness and farness of the personalities of brand and customer. Finally, it may be
stated that the key to the effective long-term relationship with consumers is governed by the
perceptional insights of consumers on the brands. This determines the symbiotic
relationship between the brands and customer values derived by their perceptions.
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PAGE 64 MEASURING BUSINESS EXCELLENCE VOL. 10 NO. 3 2006
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